Satellite

Purple was my mother-in-law’s favourite colour. Whenever I see the colour purple, I think of her and immediately my memories draw upon our time with her when she was alive and still relatively well. My mind can cast itself back to the time when she was hospitalised on a few occasions, but was still mobile, her legs still functioning with ease, and I can see our son sitting on the bed with her colouring in. She had at one time picked up the purple pencil and asked him, “And did you know that purple is Nanny’s favourite colour?”. Her grandson had simply nodded in the way toddlers absentmindedly do when they are busy with a task. My husband and I had looked at one another and smiled at their close proximity. As a grandmother, she revelled in being able to simply sit and watch him. At times, when she was able to sit close enough to him, such as on the hospital bed colouring in pictures, she would lovingly stroke his little head and say, “You beautiful little boy. Do you know Nanna loves you very, very much?”. Thinking back to those days makes my heart ache. Her love for our son, her only grandson, was clearly evident.

It was her wish that whenever our son queried his Nanna’s whereabouts, that we point out the moon and stars and say, “Wave to Nanna. She’s up there with the moon and stars.” And our son has somewhat accepted this as fact, in only the way a toddler can without judgement and too much questioning. But there’s no doubting that his little brain is trying to process that Nanna has gone away and that we don’t visit her in the nursing home anymore; that there are no phone calls to her, where he can tell her about his day.

I was hurriedly applying the final touches of my makeup the other morning, trying to quickly get myself ready to take my son to kindergarten, when he suddenly appeared in the open bathroom doorway and stated, “Mama, we need to get a satellite”. I wasn’t really paying him much attention at first because I was rushing and focussing on what I was doing. But I still gently asked the question, looking over my shoulder at him briefly, “And why is that love?” What a cutie, I thought to myself. Where did he get such a big word from?

He had been quietly watching the morning cartoons and I had no doubt that one of them was “Ready, Jet, Go!”. The main character being Jet, a young boy from a planet called Fortron 7 (ever heard of it?). It follows his adventures with several of his Earth friends, who also happen to be his neighbours. I vaguely recall thinking that a storyline with satellites orbiting the Earth must have been the latest episode. I had quickly glanced at my watch to see how much time we had left before we absolutely had to run out the door. My son answered me with, “We need a satellite so that we can talk to our friends in space”.

“Well love,” I was pretending to give such a purchase some serious consideration, “A satellite is pretty big and costs a lot of money. We also don’t have the room for one”.

Watching his little face, I could see that he wasn’t turned off by such practicalities. “Um…okay. But we still need to get one”. His tone was adamant now.

“But why do we need to get one love?” I had finished what I was doing and turned around to give him my full attention, “Who are you going to talk to?”

At this point, he had only slightly rolled his eyes, as if exasperated that he had had to explain the plain obvious to me.

“So that we can talk to Nanna of course!”.

His response totally threw me and I could suddenly feel the pinprick of tears in my eyes. With my vision beginning to blur, I managed to satisfy his request for a satellite by saying, “Well…let’s talk to Daddy about it when he comes home from work then”. He seemed happy with this and skipped off back to his cartoon watching. I, on the other hand, had to compose myself and quickly gather our things together, including my son’s school bag before madly rushing us out the front door. After dropping him off to his kindy for the day, I felt slightly heavy with the sudden well of emotions from my son’s innocent request.